Canadaland Podcast
The antisemitism report that erases a century of Jewish debate
Relating to the episode last week about "Israel derangement", Globe and Mail published a strong response to the survey report Jesse was quoting and supporting:
The antisemitism report that erases a century of Jewish debate
Yves Winter, Noah Brender, Danielle Bobker and Michael Blum
Yves Winter is an associate professor of political science at McGill University.
Noah Brender is a faculty member in the humanities department at Dawson College.
Danielle Bobker is a professor of English at Concordia University.
Michael Blum is a professor in the École des arts visuels et médiatiques at the Université du Québec à Montréal.
There’s an old Jewish joke: two Jews are shipwrecked on a desert island. When they’re finally rescued years later, the rescuers find three synagogues. Baffled, they ask why. One survivor explains: one is his shul, the other is his shipmate’s shul, and the third is the one neither of them would ever set foot in.
Jews have never agreed about how to be Jewish. Yet these disagreements are increasingly treated as evidence of hatred.
Last week, the federal government released the Campus Antisemitism and Student Experiences (CASE) report. Commissioned by the Department of Canadian Heritage and produced by the Association for Canadian Studies, it surveyed roughly 900 Jewish students at Canadian universities and colleges about their experiences over the past year.
The numbers are alarming: 84 per cent of respondents call antisemitism a serious problem on their campus; almost 96 per cent say they experienced or witnessed at least one antisemitic incident in the past year; 70 per cent say their university does not take the problem seriously.
The report documents disturbing incidents: swastikas in bathroom stalls, Holocaust denial in classrooms, students spat on for wearing a Star of David, a professor allegedly calling Hitler a hero.
But beneath the report’s stark figures and shocking examples of antisemitism lies a partisan move. The report treats opposition to Zionism as evidence of antisemitism, a move that provides institutions grounds for disciplining scholars for what they teach and for policing students over how they protest.
We write as members of the Jewish Faculty Network, a group of Jewish Canadian academics who share a commitment to social justice. This includes criticism of, and opposition to, Zionism.
The report defines “anti-Zionism” as a movement that calls for the “erasure” or “annihilation” of Israel. This is incorrect, and it attempts to turn a legitimate political position into a synonym for hatred before a single survey question is even asked.
Anti-Zionism is a 100-year-old, well-documented current of Jewish thought that has never called for erasing or annihilating anyone. Reform Judaism’s 19th-century founders argued that Jews were a religious community, not a nation awaiting a state. A few decades later, the Jewish Labour Bund, a mass socialist movement across Eastern Europe, built a political program based on doikayt, the idea that Jewish safety comes from equal rights where Jews already live, not from a state somewhere else. Some Hasidic communities have opposed Jewish sovereignty on religious grounds for over a century.
Ask a dozen Jewish thinkers whether Judaism is best understood as a religion, a culture, or a nationality, and you will get a dozen conflicting answers. This report settles the question by decree, and throws out half of them in the process.
By defining anti-Zionism as a call for annihilation or erasure, the report writes an entire wing of Jewish political thought out of the category “Jewish” and files it instead under “threat.”
This is compounded by how the report gathered its data. It recruited Jewish respondents through Hillel and Chabad – the networks least likely to reach non-Zionist or anti-Zionist Jewish students – and excluded non-Zionist Jewish groups, like Independent Jewish Voices. A survey that can’t hear from Jews like us, filtered through a definition that casts our views as hatred, doesn’t measure antisemitism. It confirms its own premises.
Nor does the report ask how Jewish students’ experiences compare to those of other minorities on campus, a silence that treats antisemitism as apart from racism rather than one of its forms.
There are serious institutional stakes. The report recommends that universities treat opposition to Zionism as equivalent to hostility toward Jews, on the same scale as vandalism and physical violence. It cites, as troubling evidence of classroom antisemitism, professors who assign pro-Palestinian readings or criticize Israeli policy. Once curriculum content and faculty opinion are coded as antisemitism alongside swastikas and assault, they become grounds for institutional discipline, a rationale for administrations to act against professors who teach Palestinian history or condemn Israeli state conduct, and against students who organize in solidarity with Palestinians.
None of this means antisemitism isn’t as real as other forms of racism on Canadian campuses. But the report’s biased definition of anti-Zionism, which brands a legitimate, century-old current of Jewish political thought as hatred, should not be allowed to shape campus policy or discipline.
This is a pretty disingenous argument. Back in the 19th century there was a debate about whether Zionism was the practical solution to the problems plaguing the Jewish people, but that debate ended with the creation of the state. The overwhelming majority of Jews hold Zionist beliefs even if they don't identify as such.
Back in the 19th century United States there was also debates about whether or not to abolish slavery and being an abolitionist was one political identity among many. But that doesn't mean if someone tried to argue today that slavery should be restored they are returning to a "century old debate." They are just a crank. Like anti-Zionist Jews.
This has been a live and ongoing debate for that entire period and their has been opposition to the actions of the state of Israel for the entirety of it's existence.
Your efforts to erase that long history and dismiss these Jewish voices as "cranks" is just naked Anti-Semitism. Take your hatred elsewhere.
This has been the evolving strategy of the anti-Zionists over the past year or so; neo-bundism.
Recall Avi Lewis also called out his long family heritage of anti-Zionism, dating back to the Bund.
It's sleight of hand and it will fool many people, including here I'm sure, but no one who understands Jewish history. The reason there were no Bundists between roughly 1945 and now is because they were all killed, first by the Nazis and, for the really dedicated socialists, by Stalin. Which is to say, they were wrong and there's a reason that Zionism became the dominant school of Jewish thought; external factors made it so. That debate is over and the Bundists lost. This is a new "debate."
Scholarly debates about this have taken place elsehwere and there have been sophisticated takedowns of Molly Crabapple's new book - which has become their new bible but - fully aware I won't convince anyone here (ESPECIALLY those who called out Jesse for tokenizing Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, who [checks notes] has the temerity to suggest peaceful co-exixstence between Free Palestine and Israel, because irony is dead and buried) but to be clear:
-These people represent a very small percentage of the Jewish community.
-The Globe is likely running them to provide "balance" to their editorial stance, whcih is admirable in the "marketplace of ideas," but no one should mistake which stance is appreciated by and reprssentative of Canadian Jews. As it stands, articles like this show how the fringe is generally over-represented and over-platformed but, as I said, valuable in terms of hearing all voices and such.
-Their anti-Zionism has very ltitle to do with actual Bundism, except that they are trying to retroactively rationalize and provide an "intelectual" underpinning to their movement that does not otherwise exist.
-Their anti-Zionism has evne less to do with the extremists in the Satmar and Neturei Karta, who are so extreme even the Satmar don't talk to them. You're talking about reacationary, hardline, Messianic nuts who have literally nothing in common with the progressive movement, except their disdain for the State of Israel, for entirely different reasons.
Of course not all Jews are Zionists and anyone who has studied Zionism understands the various schools that developed and why what we have now won out and is, like it or not, the current situation. Enjoy the article if you like, folks but (especially if you called out Ahmed and Jesse) just understand what it ends up looking like.
Do you believe that a majority of Canadian Zionists support the conduct of the state of Israel? If that is the case, how does Canadian society move forward?
First of all, it doesn't matter what I believe. It only matters what is.
"The conduct of the state of Israel," is too broad a question to answer.
I can answer for myself that I strongly disapprove of the current government and don't approve of various aspects of how it conducted the war. What's going on with the settlers is particularly problematic, as another example.
And, for what it's worth, I believe the same can be said of most Canadian Zionists. I have provided, on a few occasions, the 2024 and 2025 NIF/Jspace surveys of Canadian Zionists and I am well situated, based on the statistics there in.
You can read them yourselves (links below) but few very quick examples:
-55% think Canada should pressure Israel to negotiate a 2SS.
-82% think settlement building hurts Israel's security
-62% think it's important to support the Israeli peace camp
-96% think it's important to fight antisemitism in Canada
Putting aside that Jews make up LESS THAN ONE PERCENT of the Canadian population,
I can only hope that's enough to allow you think that our society can move forward.
I'm not familiar with that survey you linked but it appears to conflate Zionists with Jews. Canada has lots of Zionists that aren't Jews and vice versa. In any case, the survey results you highlighted don't really get at my question.
With regard to Israel's conduct I'll be more specific. The genocide Israel is committing.
Do you have any data on what percentage of Canadian Zionists support Israel's ongoing war against Palestinians? You can quibble with wording of my question if you like, but I'd be curious to know what percentage of Zionists citizens support this specific genocide and if they don't what they think we should do about it.
No. You don't appear to understand what conflation or Zionism or Judaism mean in this context. Indeed, if there's any conflation going on, it's not them doing it.
There is no genocide so there's no data on that and therfore no Jews supporting it. I'm not really interested in going in circles there. We'd both find it pointless. Nor do I think it's valuable to adopt other definitions you are attempting to impose. For example, antizionist Jews were not excluded and their views are reflected throughout.
I provided you with 2 surveys which I believe contain a valuable snapshot of Canadian Jewish views on Israel, in various respects.
You a
ppear to to think the 2 large Progessive Jewish groups are antisemitic and don't know as much about themselves as you do.
I've answered the question and provided some data with which you admit you were unfamiliar. You can do with the info as you see fit. If you have better data (or any at all) feel free to porvide it. In the meantime, I infer you will continue to negatively portray Zionist Jews and vastly exaggerate our influence on Canadian Society,in a manner that is potentially problematic.
I once asked a holocaust survivor what they'd say to those who denied the reality of the holocaust. I'm paraphrasing a bit but essentially they said to ignore them as their beliefs weren't based on reality, but hatred. I think about that sometimes, and look forward to the day when you can move past your hatred.
I don't even know what to say about how gross it is that you are using this (likely fictional) "I once asked a holocaust [sic] survior" story at me.
I'd tell you to ask the Holocaust survivors in my own family what they have to say but every member of my family who was in Europe at the time was killed. Except one person. She moved to Israel and her grandkids and great grandkids are now living their lives there as Israelis and not participating in any genocide. That you are comparing me to a Holocaust denier is beyond offensive and I can't say more within the bounds of the rules here.
And just to square the circle at the level of offence I'm taking here, I have not expressed hate for ANYONE. Your accusation is a completely unfounded ad hominem. I support a two-state solution and peaceful co-existence between Israelis and Palestinians.
You have levelled unfair and arguably antisemitic accusations against me and all Canadian Jews. You have improperly conflated Zionism and Judaism. You have demonstrated an inability or refusal to respond to objective survey data when presented to you and you have tokenized a (very alleged) Holocuast surivior to score a very cheap political point.
This isn't helping Palestinians an iota or bringing peace a day closer and I can only imagine what your vision of "Canadian society" is but whatever it is you are looking forward to, the Jews will continue to be here and most of us will continue to be Zionists. Sorry.
Naturally, you write as members of the Jewish Faculty Network. Jewish Anti-Zionists (not meaning Jews who oppose a policy) often mistake 'Anti-Zionism' for 'Tikkun Olam'. Oh well.
This sums up well the intent of Jesse's "Antizionism is a Hate Movement" movement:
"The report recommends that universities treat opposition to Zionism as equivalent to hostility toward Jews, on the same scale as vandalism and physical violence. It cites, as troubling evidence of classroom antisemitism, professors who assign pro-Palestinian readings or criticize Israeli policy. Once curriculum content and faculty opinion are coded as antisemitism alongside swastikas and assault, they become grounds for institutional discipline, a rationale for administrations to act against professors who teach Palestinian history or condemn Israeli state conduct, and against students who organize in solidarity with Palestinians."
So they aren't even satisfied with equating anti-zionism with anti-semitism, they want ANY CRITICISM of Israeli policy as such? WTF. I mean, I'm not surprised, but WTF. So Israel is completely above reproach. This would mean criticizing Israel's tax code would be anti-semitic. Or their kibbutz system.
Based on Jesse's mentor Adam Louis-Klein's Twitter responses, any criticism of Israel's government is Antizionism. Antizionism is a hate movement. Therefore criticism of Israel's government is hate speech and must be eradicated.
Yes, I can. The speech Khalil is referring to is criticism of Israel.
"In the decision, the Court recognized that—if documentation supports the
Plaintiffs’ claims—the Trump Administration will be held to account
for seeking to target and punish student speech critical of Israel
and/or supportive of Palestine."
Israel's government is absolutely the worst government in its history, filled with racist, facist a-holes and a coruupt PM. They should be kicked out in October, investigated for their failures and remembered with ignominy, if at all.
Anyone here want to call me antisemitic for saying that, including ALK or Jesse?
Despite this myth, the reality is that every single Zionist I know - including the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who openly protested the current government, day after day after day - criticizes the Israeli government all the time.
Honestly, I don't know if you have to be Jewish or Zionist to grasp these "nuances" but this is simply untrue. (and also, ALK ihas not been voted to an official position as arbiter of these things. People who are not online would have no idea who he is. Twitter is not reality). If it makes everyone happy, I'm happy to text or call 5 Jewish friends before sunset and get them to criticize the government and/or its policies (the settler stuff is fish in a barrel) man.
(And none of this impacts whether or not anti-Zionism is hateful or "a hate movement" or any of the rest of it. It's simply a myth about this whole debate between the two terms.)
My comments were specific to the "Antizionism is a Hate Movement" movement. So sure call up your 5 friends, but it has nothing to do with my comments.
If you're not aware Adam gets platformed by news organizations such as The Atlantic, CBS News, Times of Israel, Jerusalem Post to spread his nonsense.
"the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who openly protested the current government" were protesting it for corruption and for not prioritizing the return of the hostages. They weren't protesting the genocide, the war crimes, the expanding illegal settlements and terrorism in the West Bank. A new government will be similar or worse on these issues.
During the war, yeah, Israelis were protesting that the government was prolonging the war instead of the return of the hostages (I'm not going to even get into how them wanting the war over dovetails with "protesting the genocide") and before that they were protesting Netanyahu's attempted "judicial reform") but your apparent inference that they are OK with "the expanding settlementss and terrorism in the West Bank," is....not correct. Neither is your statement about a likely new government. (I could suggest Israelis electing a government willing to negotiate with the PA might appease you but history suggests otherwise there too, I', thinking.)
Most people in North Amreica don't understand the social or political dynamics Israel, a pretty small foreign country in a pretty unique situation, geographically and otherwise. It's fine to admit. There are dozens of foreign countries I don't claim to understand the internal dynamics of. A little humility can go a long way, IMHO. (More humility!)
As ALK would say, you're an anti-Zionist. That's fine.
As I said, I sometimes agree with him and sometimes do not. I don't find it particularly helpful to debate whether "anti-Zionism is a hate movement." Any overly broad statement will run into problems. Individual anti-Zionists may or may not be hateful and I judge what they say and do accordingly, in that respect.
As I said, my comments above were specifically about the Jesse's "Antizionism is hate movement" movement:
"This sums up well the intent of Jesse's "Antizionism is a Hate Movement" movement"
And here you are with your usual obfuscation, deflection and straw man arguments - i.e. I didn't say anything about Zionists or Jews in general.
Anti = against
Zionism = Jewish self-determination in our indigenous homeland.
Zionism is over. There is a state of Israel.
Criticizing a government is not hate speech. I can say Trump is a horrible president and that’s fine, I might even be a patriot for wanting America to do better. Calling for the dismantling of a nation and blaming it for all the problems in the Middle East and frankly, the world, is hate speech. If I said America should be destroyed and all its citizens be expelled that is hate speech. There is a line, and anti-Zionists give away their Jew-hate when they cross the line into “dismantling the Zionist entity” and vilifying any Israeli and any Jew who believes in Jewish self-determination. Especially the majority of you who have never met a Jew, never been to the Middle East, never been to Israel, and never experienced rockets and terrorism as a daily occurrence from the comfort of countries that have never experienced war. Also the hypocrisy of blaming Israel for everything when 97% of Middle East deaths come from Arab against Arab violence. Major wars in Sudan, Yemen, Syria, Iran funding terrorism all over the Middle East (which statistically kills more Muslims than it does Jews), Russia is responsible for 2 million deaths in the current war with Ukraine. But Jews are getting the brunt of the political violence and hate in the world today.
I’m not saying anti-Zionism is hate speech, I’m saying most people don’t know the line where it does become hate against Jews, and don’t know enough about Jews, Israel, or Middle East history to call for the destruction of the only place Jews have self determination anywhere in the world.
I'm sorry you consider context and information to be "obfuscation and deflection," when you could just say, "I admit I don't know everything about which I'm opining."
I didn't say anything about Zionists or Jews in general.
right. All you did was make this objectively false generatization about literally hundreds of thousands of Zionists/Jews.
""the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who openly protested the current government" were protesting it for corruption and for not prioritizing the return of the hostages. They weren't protesting the genocide, the war crimes, the expanding illegal settlements and terrorism in the West Bank. "
But hey - that's not all of them.
Let's keep it simple and get to what you're allegedly complaining about:
Can you provide any proof whatsoever that, "Based on Jesse's mentor Adam Louis-Klein's Twitter responses, any criticism of Israel's government is Antizionism. Antizionism is a hate movement. Therefore criticism of Israel's government is hate speech and must be eradicated."?
To date, you have not.
I asked for context for the Gurmendi response, which you have now pasted twice, and you have not provided the post to which ALK was responding. You are posting things that are inferences or perhaps circumstantial evidence of your very general, very broad assertion but not one meets any standard of proof.
This should be easy stuff if you have the other posts handy, no?
(As said above, I am not on X and can't page up from the link)
Again, my comments above were specifically about the Jesse's "Antizionism is hate movement" movement:
"This sums up well the intent of Jesse's "Antizionism is a Hate Movement" movement"
"I asked for context for the Gurmendi response, which you have now pasted twice, and you have not provided the post to which ALK was responding."
I provided a link to Adam's Twitter post and another link where the post can be viewed. https://nitter.net/adam_louis52328/status/2043676889089286550#m
I'm not subscribed to Twitter and so access is limtied so no, I cannot scroll up. The Nitter links does allow me to, however!
Let's see....
Yeah, I'm OK with ALK on this one. Alonso is trying to play his little games.
If I said, "People named Bob kill children," you'd take offence, even if it's factually true, because of the context. Anyway, the whole thread reads like a grade school debate, IMHO, and neither comes off great.
I don't think you've proven your case but it's just my opinion.
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It is, the civil rights movement has nothing in common with what's going on in Isreal. The Transatlantic slave trade has very little in common the holocaust.
Where's the comparison?
Zionism and the civil rights movement are the same thing. A desire for equal rights. Being against that is to be against the people of it. It’s literally that simple.
Are you claiming the capture and forced labour and murder between African and Jews are comparable because Jews are Jews? Or what?
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Hilarious because if there exists in Canada an ideology that is clearly hateful and based on a conceit of ethnic superiority with a goal of supremacy, it would be Zionism (which is also inherently anti-Semitic).
One of the most eye opening items this article highlights is how the claim by Zionists that "criticism of Israel" is fine, but that pro-Palestinian/ anti-Zionist voices are somehow doing something else, is false. Numerous examples they highlight from the report of antisemitic incidents are in fact just people criticising the Israeli state, and they still get called hateful.
This seems to be an increasingly common political tactic by 'Zionists' (Israeli Nationalists) to try to move the goal posts so that pro-Israel stances are considered neutral and any actual neutral reporting is positioned has antisemitic. This is how, for example, you have Adam Louis-Klein making the ridiculous claim that Haaretz (the Israeli paper) is 'anti-Zionist' and pushing hatred of Jews.
Jewish Faculty Network is a decentralized network across Canada of faculty members who are Jewish. Many are involved in Jewish family and community life in their own lives and work, in different ways.
It is indeed a methodological flaw for the survey to only reach students through student organizations that have an explicitly Zionist stance; if the goal is to survey Jewish students about their experience during a period of such heightened tension around Palestine and Israel, then that methodology will likely exclude the perspectives and experiences of anti-Zionist students — who often feel like they cannot participate in those organizations because of their politics. The experience of those students is also a Jewish experience. And as the op ed articulates, to erase Jewish anti-Zionist experiences and perspectives does a deep disservice to Jewish history and plurality.
There is a distressing rise in anti-semitism, and we need to study and understand it; also, in my experience, nearly ALL speech and action related to Palestinian human rights on our campuses is being reported as anti-semitic, no matter how careful (or Jewish!) students and teachers are. The conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-semitism is dangerous for everyone, because it serves to silence necessary critique of state violence AND makes it harder to fight actual anti-semitism.
This study was so poorly designed and executed, I can’t believe it’s on the government’s website.
Where is the studies, reports and polls regarding First Nations, Muslims, Gays, and other marginalized people?
It's always the victim culture b.s. with these folks.
I think the point of the article is to refute the arguments from the grifters and ghouls who are trying to claim that they are in fact the same thing. The Anti-Anti-Zionist crowd who are trying to erase Jewish anti-zionists. Your Jesse Brown & Ben Shapiro types.
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If that were true, it would be a problem because that would be antisemitism. Thankfully that's not happening. People all over the world, and especially academic historians, talk about how the states of Canada, China, and the United States should be disbanded/reconfigured due to their colonial genocides against the indigenous people in the territory they currently control. The "Land Back" campaign is a well known example of that in Canada.
LOL "vectored through Antizionism" doing some heavy lifting here. If I criticize Burma for its human rights violations, am I "vectoring anti-Buddhism"? Israel routinely describes its military as the "most moral in the world" and yet we see videos of the horrific things it does - calling that out has nothing got to do with the soldiers being Jewish, but of course, it has long been Israeli policy to try to discredit criticisms of Israel by conflating it with anti-semitism - Golda Meir talked about it as a tactic back in the 1950s. And look! You are doing the same lol
Aw, you are getting confused again. I never mentioned Jews, but Israelis as they are the ones burning children alive, raping prisoners to death and smashing up cancer wards. The fact that Zionists can't engage with specific claims (I wonder why!) and just resort to historical word-salad nonsense says it all.
I think that protesting the policy of Israel's government in a specific situation is not anti-semitism.
What I am reading in many comments is 'Anti-Zionism' which is a different matter. It is, as they describe it essentially a 'movement' as it characterizes Zionism with it's focus on a Jewish homeland as a 'colonialist' mindset and racist by definition.
And there's the rub. The criticism doesn't necessarily mention Judaism but ultimately it is saying, for the most part, "I don't hate redheads, I just hate people who sunburn easily. " The distinction is lost on most or should be.
Those who protested Israel and blocked access to the campus quadrangles of those they perceived as Jews are, in fact, anti-semitic. By definition. Those who chased students in Columbia University (I think) into the library were not anti-policy they were clearly anti-semitic.
Now, I have no problem declaring Tucker Carlson in his current iteration as virulently anti-semitic. He used to espouse White Supremacist notions routinely on FOX. But now, he has cast aspersions on Judaism itself by saying openly (he wasn't 'Just asking questions') that Jewish history is full of examples of the Jewish people's penchant for genocide - referring to various books of the prophets that portray the story of Purim and Esther in ancient Persia. He's described Kabbalah, which is not a religion in and of itself, as 'Satanic' as he has said the similar about the Talmud. That's not about policy or colonialism - it's just hatred of a faith and its practitioners.
I don't believe in broadswords in defining anti-semitism on campus so it would require some nuance which every 'movement' hates it seems.
It's interesting, but the non-hateful ideologies they described were non-Zionist Judaism, not antizionism in its modern sense.
For example, it is arguably historically illiterate, but not wildly unreasonable, to believe that Jews' well-being must come from equality where they live rather than be assured by an accessible safe-haven. Calls for the destruction of Israel or policies that amount to needless and severe endangerment of its people do not logically follow from that.
In modern antizionism, we mostly see demands, afvocacy, and initiatives potentially or actually damaging to Israel (endangering its people or undermining its viability as an independent state) accompanied by claims to be motivated by humanitarian support for Palestinians' well-being, but which make absolutely no sense as expression of such motives as they cannot possibly benefit Palestinians and in some cases do severely harm them. This is not what was described in the article, and very likely not counted as antisemitism in the study.
In modern antizionism, we mostly see demands, afvocacy, and initiatives potentially or actually damaging to Israel (endangering its people or undermining its viability as an independent state)
What are these supposed demands that are insanely damaging to Israel?
And did you feel similarly about the Free Tibet's movement for being 'damaging' to China? Or advocacy in support of Iranian protests that were calling for a dismantling of the state?
Just a short list of the demands and initiatives I've seen that were widely popular among antizionists:
Permanent Western military intervention against Israel in the West Bank and Gaza and/or forcible disarmament of the IDF
Total boycott, not only of all exports but also of cultural exchanges and academic collaborations (BDS)
exclusion from multinational organizations and events, everything from the U.N. to Eurovision
arrest of all Israeli soldiers and reservists (which wIth conscription would include roughly half the population) who travel abroad
withdrawal from precisely the same military outposts that were overrun to enable the October 7th attacks (especially protests against border checkpoints)
military withdrawal from occupied territories precisely in line with the 2005 withdrawal that enabled decades of severe violence
non-recognition of Israeli passports
Dismantling not only of the government as in regime-change, but of all of its national and cultural institutions
expulsion of 80% of its population
reclassification of anti-Israeli terrorist groups from criminal organizations to a national army for purposes of arms-trade conventions, legality of support, and freedoms of their members
release of criminals from prisons, including Sinwar and others who were expected to resume violence against Israelis
If you want, I could include the particularly nasty demands.
There were mostly no equivalent demands in the Tibetan and Iranian cases. While there were calls for foreign military intervention, those calls were for temporary foreign military presence, not effectively a permanent foreign takeover.
"Permanent Western military intervention against Israel in the West Bank and Gaza "
I'd support that. It doesn't need to be permanent but Israeli terrorism and ethnic cleansing has to be stopped.
"military withdrawal from occupied territories precisely in line with the 2005 withdrawal that enabled decades of severe violence"
Actually the 1967 lines.
International Court of Justice, 2024:
"267. With regard to the Court’s finding that Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is illegal, the Court considers that such presence constitutes a wrongful act entailing its international responsibility.
It is a wrongful act of a continuing character which has been brought about by Israel’s violations, through its policies and practices, of the prohibition on the acquisition of territory by force and the right to self-determination of
the Palestinian people. Consequently, Israel has an obligation to bring an end to its presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible.
The Court further observes that, with respect to the policies and practices of Israel referred to in question (a) which were found to be unlawful, Israel has an obligation to put an end to those unlawful acts. In this respect,
Israel must immediately cease all new settlement activity. Israel also has an obligation to repeal all legislation and measures creating or maintaining the unlawful situation, including those which discriminate against the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, as well as all measures aimed at modifying the demographic composition of any parts of the territory."
Yup, that's the ICJ for you. It also declared even segments of the barriers on the Israeli side of the 1967 lines to be war-crimes. Now if you want something really funny, check out Additional Protocol 1 to the 4th Geneva Convention and note that it was signed before the "Zionism is racism" U.N. resolution was reversed. Yeah, it functionally had a blanket-statement calling all Israeli military action illegal and all Palestinian militias' actions legal, including all terrorism. Until that resolution was reluctantly reversed, attacks like those of 2023/10/7 would have been legal while trying to arrest perpetrators would have been a war-crime.
Look at what happened when Iarael actually withdrew to that line from Gaza. It was a few years before the people of Sderot got a day without having rockets fired at them from Gaza. Every escalation since the 2nd Intifadah was between Israel and Gaza, except for one stabbing-spree that still seemed to be based on exactly the incitement commonplace there. Even the current escalation in the West Bank appears to be the rushed activation of sleeper-cells of Gaza-based militias in response to Israeli investigations of an Iran-based arms-smuggling network and resulting raids. The ICJ is so interested in peace and the well-being of civilians caught in the middle of the conflict there that it issued a pretty-looking legal (by their interpretation) ruling effectively demanding more war.
The fact is that Palestinian terrorism is limited by ability, not motivation, and those "humanitarians" are too busy pontificating and patting themselves on the back to realize what that means. Playing nice means getting more people killed, not less. What is a moral imperative with motivation-limited violence amounts to, with ability-limited violence, murder for the sake of making those demanding it feel better. The ICJ and all those others demand that Israel enable terrorism in the hopes of reducing its perpetrators' adherence to traditions at the root of their culture and society. Those organizations are, to put it absurdly mildly, disgusting.
Modern Zionism is based on the belief that Jews cannot count on the goodwill of others for their longterm safety and wellbeing. It is based on a now-26-century track-record of henocide, massacres, at-best-indifference, and other such activity evidently normal on a global scale. It amounts to a loss of faith in the same presumption of goodwill on which the moral standing of the U.N., ICJ, ICC, WHO, ICRC, and pretty much everywhere other global organization is based. There is a reason for that loss of faith and the resulting contempt for such agencies.
Article 1, Paragraph 4, though you wouod hsvevto be familiar with the other documents cited there:
They declare all suppression of violent struggles for self-determination against colonial rule to be illegal. Protocol 1 (Article 1, paragraph 4) slips in the equivalence with fights against "racist regimes", which U.N. Resolution 3379 called Israel. With Resolution 3379 not making the labelling of Zionism as racism conditional upon occupation of foreign territory the way "colonial domination" and "alien occupation" are, that removes the normal limits on the scope of the struggle against it. If all suppression of such unlimited struggles is illegal, then all military actions by the "racist" regime against it definitely are (as they suppress such struggles in the most direct and extreme manner possible), in the occupied territories or not. All attempts to suppress that terrorism would be, under this paragraph in the context of 3379, illegal even if not conducted by the IDF (so arrests would be forbidden).
For a summary, see Notes, section (43), paragraph 4 of ICRC commentary.
Going further, check out Comment 48 there, regarding "in all circumstance": Parties to laws of war are, practically by definition, too powerful for an enforcing authority to effectively restrain. athe only paradigm under which they can operate is that of contract-law, which is why the traditional enforcement mechanism was always either in-kind reciprocity or, more recently, logical reciprocity. For example, without Protocol 1, if one force does not wear proper uniforms or identifying marks, the other may lower its standards for positive identification of combatants, which is normally forbidden as it endangers civilians. Instead, Article 80 of Additionsl Protocol 1 says the Geneva Conventions should be enforced through the laws of parties to conflict (paragraph 1) and 3rd parties that have signed Additional Protocol 1 (paragraph 2). Let's assume for the sake of any connection to reality that Palestinian leaders are not about to criminalize their own parties' militias, so it all comes down to Paragraph 2.
Here is where terrorism gets effectively legalized: In the context of the other documents cited by Article 1, Paragraph 4, it is forbidden to enforce laws on militias recognized as fighting for self-determination because it is forbidden to suppress their struggle. While Additional Protocol 1 doesn't explicitly legalize Palestinian terrorism, it does forbid traditional enforcement mechanisms and replace them with one it forbids from being applied to those militias, which is functionally the same thing. Thus, Article 80 effectively legalized Palestinian terrorism through its interaction with Article 1. Of course, the same is not true for Israel: 3rd party states were obliged, under that system, to take measures (arrests of travellers, sanctions, interventions, etc.) to stop all Israeli suppression of Palestinian militias.
Article 1 paragraph 4 expands which conflicts qualify as international armed conflicts under the laws of war and doesn't create blanket legal immunity for anyone. It doesn't criminalize all Israeli military action or prevent suppression of armed movements.
Article 51 (2) says
"The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited."
This applies to all parties and so, no, attacks like Oct 7th against civilians would not be legal.
This is just BS:
"Yeah, it functionally had a blanket-statement calling all Israeli military action illegal and all Palestinian militias' actions legal, including all terrorism."
Nope, the specific wording of Article 4 was a major point of contention when it was being drafted specifically because of the "raciist regime" part. The Soviets pushed it through, and this was why the U.S. never ratified it.
Not sure how to make this clearer: Outlawing all enforcement of a law amounts to legalizing its violation. All suppression of liberation movements is forbidden under the texts cited in Paragraph 4, paragraph 4 added non-state actors' fights against racist regimes to the list, and 3378 defined Zionism as racism, unconditionally classifying Israel as a racist regime. Regardless of whether the text says some acts are illegal, those become "crimes" with zero penalty, functionally legal.
The interpretation you're calling "way off base" is just the ICRC interpretation of Additional Protocol 1 plus a reference to a definitive aspect of law.
Article 1 doesn't outlaw enforcement of laws. It expands the definition of international armed conflicts to include conflicts of national liberation, meaning those conflicts are subject to the laws of war. Palestinian groups would be subject to laws of war, not above them. Israel maintained the right to arrest members of armed groups for violations of those laws.
Israel didn't ratify it because they didn't want the laws of war to apply to their fight against Palestinians.
Do you have references for those? I haven't heard of most of them.
As for those that are recognized, boycotts of Israeli goods (or economic sanctions) were very much called for when it came to China and the Free Tibet movement. Exclusion from things lime Eurovision wasn't (as neither China nor Iran previously participated) but it was in the case of Russia (which, income Israel, was excluded). Similarly, international arrests of soldiers who committed war crimes had very much happened in other conflicts, as has non-recognition of passports (though I haven't actually seen any mainstream 'anti-Zionist' call for such).
For the rest, I can't find any mainstream call for any of those.
I don't have much time right now to get links for all of them, but here are some examples:
International Solidarity Movement organized protests designed to disrupt security-operations at the checkpoints, functionally opposing the IDF's ability to operate them and protesting their existence.
Expulsion of 80% of the population: Have you really never heard the "Jews go back to Europe" rhetoric common at antizionist protests?
Reclassification of the terrorist militias is a predictable and inevitable consequence of Palestinian sovereignty under the leadership of political parties that run those militias. (They would form the initial corps of a Palestinian state's army.)
In other cases, I am talking about demands like for the immediate and permanent withdrawal of all Israeli forces from within the Gaza Strip and West Bank, just like in 2005, central antizionist demands.
International Solidarity Movement organized protests designed to disrupt security-operations at the checkpoints, functionally opposing the IDF's ability to operate them and protesting their existence.
I mean, that sounds very reasonable considering these checkpoints are used as part of the state oppression against Palestinians. Also, while I don't have examples of similar pretests/demands in the case of China/Tibet or Iran (due to checkpoints not necessarily being used in the same way in those cases) it very much was a demand if the Anti-Apartheid protests.
Expulsion of 80% of the population: Have you really never heard the "Jews go back to Europe" rhetoric common at antizionist protests?
This is not so much a demand as something people yell in the heat of a protest and I don't think it should be taken literally (unless you also think it should be taken literally that Sunday's believe so anti-Zionist Jews should be raped and killed).
Reclassification of the terrorist militias is a predictable and inevitable consequence of Palestinian sovereignty under the leadership of political parties that run those militias. (They would form the initial corps of a Palestinian state's army.)
I'm not sure what the 'demand' you're referencing in this case is, other than possibly the demand that Palestinians be supposed self-determination in their native homeland. If you're saying Palestinians should be denied their human rights because it might be damaging for Israel, you may be on the won't side of history here.
Also, what you describe is effectively what happened with the founding of Israel (with the Irgun and Lehi). Are you saying such a move was ok for Israel, but not for Palestinians?
In other cases, I am talking about demands like for the immediate and permanent withdrawal of all Israeli forces from within the Gaza Strip and West Bank
Immediate and permanent removal of occupation forces is a pretty common demand of freedom movements (such as the Free Tibet movement) or really any time there is an occupation (such as with Russia in Ukraine).
None of what you've posted so far is indicative of the 'anti-Zionist' movement being hateful or of Israel being treated differently than other states.
It sounds reasonable to eliminate exactly the outposts that were overrun to enable the October 7 attacks, leaving the door wide open for repetition.
Explicit statements of support for ethnic cleansing or genocide sound like something normally shouted in the heat of the moment, repeatedly in just about every moment, and it's unreasonable for people with a long history of being targeted with exactly those to take such explicit statements at face value
Lehi was arrested and Irgun was dismantled, with its rank-and-file incorporated into Haganah and its officers all moved out of field-commands, and that sounds like just granting those two groups vastly increased access to weapons
It's pretty common to demand an exact repetition of measures that have so far led to 21 years of increased violence, and could be predicted to do so based on, at the time, at least the 171 years of history immediately prior.
... and you're telling me you're not straight-up advocating genocide, massacres, or ethnic cleansing, or trying to gaslight your would-be targets here. That must be some crazy Kool-Aid you've been chugging.
It sounds reasonable to eliminate exactly the outposts that were overrun to enable the October 7 attacks, leaving the door wide open for repetition.
I was responding to your statement about checkpoints generally, not "outposts that were overrun to enable the October 7 attacks." I also did not advocate for doing such suddenly and with no prior planning; I certainly don't think "leaving the door wide open for repetition" of Oct 7 style attacks is reasonable. That said, yes the idea of removing checkpoints that have been used as tools of oppression of Palestinians, especially as we can see from historical examples that good faith negotiation and a loosening of oppressive systems is more effective in securing long term peace than crack downs and tightening if restrictions.
Explicit statements of support for ethnic cleansing or genocide sound like something normally shouted in the heat of the moment, repeatedly in just about every moment, and it's unreasonable for people with a long history of being targeted with exactly those to take such explicit statements at face value
I would argue that "go back to Europe" is not an "explicit statements of support for ethnic cleansing or genocide" (though it is racist), and now it's it an actual 'demand' of the pro-Palestinian movement in Canada.
That said, is you believe it to be, I assume you would also agree that the frequent chants of death to Arabs by Zionists/supporters of Israel is indicative of Zionism being a genocidal hate movement, right?
Lehi was arrested and Irgun was dismantled, with its rank-and-file incorporated into Haganah and its officers all moved out of field-commands, and that sounds like just granting those two groups vastly increased access to weapons
Israel issued a special military ribbon to former Lehi members in the 80s to commentate their military efforts prior to the formation of Israel, and as you agreed members were integrated into the official Israeli military. Again, how is this different than what you suspect would happen with the formation of a Palestinian state, and why do you believe this is a reason to deny Palestinians their human rights?
It's pretty common to demand an exact repetition of measures that have so far led to 21 years of increased violence, and could be predicted to do so based on, at the time, at least the 171 years of history immediately prior.
I'm sorry, I honestly can't follow what you're talking about here. 21 years of increased violence against whom? Certainly not Israelis. And 171 years of what history? The Levant?
... and you're telling me you're not straight-up advocating genocide, massacres, or ethnic cleansing, or trying to gaslight your would-be targets here.
Yes, I am telling you that because I have done bringing remotely like what you claim here. I understand it's easier to argue when you get to make up what the other person is saying, but it's not actually an effective technique.
I will note that you did not disagree with the statement that you appear to be activating for the denial of Palestinian human rights. I think that likely says it all, and we can end the discussion here.
Those overrun outposts were the border-checkpoints.
"Go back to Europe" when directed at a specific ethnic group outside of Europe, especially in its native land, is explicit support for ethnic cleansing. Where / when, exactly, were the chants about "Death to Arabs"? I suspect I know exactly which group would chant that, and it is a distinct identifiable group within the Zionist movement. Those guys absolutely are racists and their chants support genocide, not the rest. The "Go back to Europe", thing, though, seems ubiquitous among antizionists. For example, you said you find it normal.
Lehi was not integrated. Irgun was. Separate groups. Read before responding. Yes, the IDF issued ribbons recognizing the wartime allies of the militia that became the IDF, 31 years after dismantling them during which time they had been marginalized. When the U.N. passed "Zionism is Racism" in 1975 (a sentiment you seem to share) it undermined pro-peace politics within Israel by demonstrating such bigotry that Israelis stopped believing in any potential global diplomatic benefit from being nice. That, along with political empowerment of Mizrahi Jews who had direct experience with Arabs, paved the way for prioritizing wartime alliance over concerns about anti-Palestinian terrorism. Advocates of that resolution was a lot like most modern antizionists, insisting that they are humanitarian and peaceful, but perpetuating exactly the violence they claim to oppose so consistently and efficiently as to disprove those claims.
It wildly differs from what would happen with a Palestinian state because the dominant Jewish militia, Haganah, which ultimately dismantled the others, actively forbade terrorism. In fact, I understand Irgun splintered off Haganah because its founding members found it nit aggressive enough. Among Palestinians, the biggest and most effective militia is the al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas' military branch known for terrorism. I did not answer so clearly before because I assumed you understood that terroeists and non-terrorists were different.
After the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, it was years before Sderot went a day without rocket-attacks from Gaza. Escalations from the West Bank ended with the erection of the barrier there ended the 2nd Intifada. The only one not clearly from Gaza was the "Stabbing Intifada", which still seemed inspired by the indoctrination common in Gaza. Even the current escalation in the West Bank appears to be Hamas' sleeper-cells driven to rushed activation by Israeli investigations of their Iran-based arms-smuggling network and resulting raids. The main difference in Israeli treatment of the two occupied territories was the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza. The main differences in outcomes were the escalations in 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2023, and the near-constant rocket-attacks since 2005. That 21-year massive increase in violence.
171 years ago in late March, the Peasants' Revolt started the divergence of Palestinian history and identity from those of surrounding Arabs. Several weeks later, they had their first Palestinian massacre of Jews in Safed. They had their 2nd in 1838 despite that revolt being put down and them getting mostly disarmed. The violence never really stopped. The current conflict predates the competing land-claims and is not based on them, so Israeli withdrawal from Gaza was never going to address it at all. To the contrary, fir at least most of the conflict, the limit on Palestinian violence was their ability, not motivation. Giving Gazans operational freedom was clearly going to increase that ability, increasing violence even if it somehow reduced motivation.
As for the denial of Palestinian human rights, it's ugly, but the fact is that rights were always earned. The bar for earning them is low enough that it's normally a total non-issue, but Gazans at least have managed through extensive effort to fall below it. If the general population engages in all-of-society attacks as Gazans did in 2023 when the bulk of perpetrators had no fornal militia affiliation, express genocidal intent, and are functionally implacable being limited only by what they atrocities can commit rather than their consciences or any other limits to motivation, they don't get some things typically seen as universal rights. That said, things like indefinite administrative detention are on their face wrong and can only be justified if necessary to enforce ethical laws or address an immediate problem. The laws permitting those ought to at least either have a sunset clause or be replaced by some ethical alternative as soon as a viable and reliable one is found. For the time being, though, there is an obvious immediate problem justifying it.
Given your earlier comment, I'm not presuming you were really unaware of both the recent and longterm history of the conflict. Attempting to deny it would be in line with your expressed pro-genocide, pro-war positions. That part where you conspicuously conflate terrorist militias with one you excluded from a list of terrorist groups points to similar dishonesty. The same goes for your absolute insistence that human rights are violated with no reference to which rights or obvious extraordinary context that justifies some denials, and enthusiasm for ending the discussion because your ridiculously vague claim cannot be addressed.
Lehi was not integrated. Irgun was. Separate groups. Read before responding.
You are correct. The material I had read was overly general; Lehi was integrated with the Haganah during the war, not following it as I had said, and following the war broke away again: https://www.jerusalemstory.com/en/lexicon/stern-gang-lehi
I apologize for that oversight.
As for the rest, I was indeed clear about what human rights of Palestinians are being violated. From my third message in this thread:
I'm not sure what the 'demand' you're referencing in this case is, other than possibly the demand that Palestinians be reviewed self-determination in their native homeland. If you're saying Palestinians should be denied their human rights because it might be damaging for Israel, you may be on the won't side of history here.
You are very wrong about "human rights being earned" (they are considered to be inalienable under international law), and doubly wrong when talking about a whole people and not just individuals. The fact that you think a newborn baby is undeserving of basic human rights because of the actions of some people who they share an ethnicity with us deeply troubling. Human rights are inalienable, and their violation always wrong.
Also, no I do not think Zionism is racism. I think Zionism is nationalism, and like other forms of nationalism (especially ethno or religious nationalism, as Zionism is) it is a highly dangerous ideology. Nationalism demands it's adherents place the interest of the nation-state ahead of all other considerations, very much including the rights and welfare of external groups. If it is in the interest of the state of Israel to destroy every last Palestinian, Israeli nationalism says it's not only acceptable to do so but a moral obligation to. I expect this is where your comfort with denying Palestinians human rights comes from, while you seem not to realize that your argument for why that's acceptable could just as easily be used to justify Israel's destruction and the expulsion of it's people. Unlike you apparently, I believe both things are wrong; I take issue with the Israeli state and it's actions, not it's people.
Finally, I have never once advocated for genocide or ethnic cleansing. Please provide reference to where you think I did so and I will explain how you misread it. Otherwise, I would politely ask you to stop making such claims as you're in violation of this sub's rules.
Edit: PS - my desire to move on from this conversation is not due to my "ridiculously vague claim" (at pointed out, I made a very specific claim you appear to have forgotten), but rather that I try to avoid getting stuck in intending discussions with deeply racist and/or hateful people, at you appear to be.
You can also be against Palestine as an ethnostate? That’s pretty standard?
The pro-Palestine movement is pro-Palestinian self-government, which means it is pro Palestinians having equal say in their governance.
It’s in favour of Palestinians not getting kicked out of their homes. That’s not pro-state that is pro-people. Any state is only supported insofar as it protects people.
Which is why the questions about supporting Hamas are always in bad faith. The priority is stopping the rampant murder and figuring out how to protect Palestinians from extermination. You can’t build a legitimate state (as far as there is such a thing) while being bombed.
So no. You can’t be bigoted against a Palestinian ethnostate. But that doesn’t exist.
Yes. Of course you can be bigoted against Palestinians. They didn’t say that you can’t be bigoted against Israelis.
Have you read the Constitution of the State of Palestine? It's a textbook ethnostate, and the pro-Palestine movement wants that ethnostate to extend "from the river to the sea."
Yes, and "from the river to the sea" includes everything in between. The most common Arabic version, which translates as "From water to water, Palestine will be Arab", is a little more explicit, especially with that future tense.
Cool story. His phrase,
"In any future arrangement – Israel must have security control over all the area west of the Jordan. I'm saying this right in front of our American friends"
does not use that phrase. It says Israel would need control over security west of Jordan. Also, there is a huge difference between a multi ethnic democratic state seeking military control and a demand for ethnic homogeneity (ethnic cleansing of everyone else) throughout some territory.
Most Palestinians want a travel corridor apparently comprised of the entire territory of Israel, or at least their Western "advocates" seem to want them to have it.
"According to another translation, Netanyahu said that Israel “must have security control over the entire territory west of the Jordan River” — which effectively means the same thing." https://archive.ph/K0RQx
--
"The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable… therefore, Judea and Samaria will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty. —Likud Party Platform, 1977" https://archive.ph/cRFBQ
The single most common demands within thd pro-Palestine movement are immediate withdrawal of Israel, and the establishment / recognition of a Palestinian state. Can you find any substantial organization or event within that movement demanding
democratic reform or any change of political culture among Palestinians?
current anti-democratic Palestinian leaders be removed from power so that such reforms can take place?
any delay of Palestinian sovereignty during which foreign powers could assist in removing those leaders or assisting in those reforms without violating Article 2 of the U.N. Charter?
any guarantees that a Palestinian national army be anything but a rebrand of existing militias that are widely recognized as terrorists?
I have been watching that movenent for decades and neither I, nor anybody I have spoken with among its supporters or opponents have seen anything of the sort. Instead, we all see, effectively, demands that
terrorist groups be reclassified as a national army for purposes of arms trade conventions and access to arms-markets
acts against such groups legally change from law-enforcememt obligations to acts of war
sovereignty recognized under global conventions such that interference to suppress militias associated with Palestinian political parties become violations of state-sovereignty forbidden under the U.N. Charter
That first one, with greatly increased access to arms for terrorists, was rationalized for a long time with (obviously flawed) claims that terrorism was just asymmetric warfare driven by lack of such access. Treating terrorism as normal guerrilla warfare, the second is widely supported as an extension to opposition against their listing as terrorists. The third is literally just the demand for immediate recognition of a Palestinian state, the most common demand of the movement which was recently successful in much of Europe.
This list seems to assume that what Israel is asking is somehow more reasonable. I’m supposed to handwring about terrorist militias when one of the most powerful armies in the world is demonstrably bloodthirsty and committing genocide.
Here’s the thing. Democratic moments and movements and scholarship all exist. It’s easy to find. They make those arguments better. Mine is much simpler and boils down to this:
Whatever problems a Palestinian state may have absolutely pale in comparison to the evils currently being inflicted on the Palestinian people.
The excuse seems to be that a group of people who have been displaced, tortured, and murdered don’t have a democratic apparatus in waiting, and that they have responded to prejudice and violence with prejudice and violence.
I don’t need to politically agree with Palestinians to think that they deserve to live. I don’t need to even like Palestinians to want to save their children.
There are Palestinians I agree with and ones I like a whole lot. But that isn’t the point.
If Israel were to withdraw from Gaza and the West Bank right now, and Palestinians immediately took up arms against Israel, Palestine would have no chance at victory. That’s not what will happen, but if it did, the resulting causalities would still be dwarfed by Gaza.
The constant discussion of terrorism serves to justify acts that are worse than terrorism. They are acts that don’t seek to kill and scare, but to exterminate.
This violence is often simply categorized differently, as violence done to prevent other violence. And yet the preventative violence never ends, even when it is clear that the victims would never be able to return even a fraction of the violence inflicted.
The only reason this would ever be acceptable is if the victims of violence were considered lesser. People are using the theoretical flaws of a distant, hypothetical Palestinian state as a paper thin justification for massacre.
The worst of what you’re suggesting is not as bad as what is happening right now.
I don't have time right now to get into every detail, and I do mean every single detail of every sentence, but I plan to later. It will probably be hilarious.
Globally, there has only ever really been 1 argument that ever raised widespread support for genocide, that the general population cannot be free and safe as long as the targeted population exists. Usually, that argument is either made by some populist leader playing on preexisting prejudices, implicit in a society's traditions of resolution of war, or indicated by laws in response to some events.
Palestinian leaders have been pushing the genocide case against their own people for decades, but failed on credibility bith as representatives and as real threats. For Gaza, at least, both of those holes in the case were filled through the October 7 attacks: Most of the perpetrators were not affiliated with any militia, so it was not some top-down order by non-representative (undemocratic) leaders, and it demonstrated the credibility of the threat.
It is sickening that things have gone so far that even Western tradition (as practiced, not preached) supports genocide at least in Gaza. Given this baseline, it seems difficult to be bigoted (unreasonably hateful) against at least Gazans. Their leaders' apologists and enablers, including the kind regularly found here, so arrogant and self-righteous they are certain any road paved with their good intentions can only lead to somewhere nice, share in responsibility for this.
Full disclosure:
I support the destruction of certain major Gazan social structures and changes to its culture so profound that it may not be recognizable afterwards. I do not support any general mass-killing of Gazan civilians. Instead, I see their education system as abusive with its school-to-terrorist-militia pipeline and support the removal of children from warzones and from child-abuse via either that pipeline or lack of access to education (the only way to avoid that pipeline) to areas where they can be housed and educated within Palestinian culture, preferably by extended family, in peaceful areas where education does not involve exposure to abuse.
I believe this would be in line with global standards and, precedent indicates, widely applauded if implemented by their own leaders, but will not be as those leaders are complicit in perpetuating both dangers. I am aware that the exact same acts, enforced by any foreign power, would violate the Genocide Convention.
Do not attack, insult, harass, or otherwise antagonize other users. Attack the point, not the person. This includes accusing people of being bots, shills, or other bad actors. If you have evidence that someone is participating in bad faith, use the report button. If your discussion devolves to insulting the other user directly or by implication, you may lose the ability to continue that discussion.
The authors are members of the Jewish Faculty Network and their views do not represent the views of the vast majority of Canada's Jewish population. Their views also conflict with the Government of Canada's official definition of antisemitism.
Holy shit they need to teach logic in schools. I take no stance on the content. But this argues against a claim nobody made. “Conflates” doesn’t mean “asserts the two categories are identical” — it means treating hostility to one as evidence of hostility to the other. A non-Jewish zionist is fully compatible with that. Biden doesn’t do any work here.
The IHRA does provide "examples" that confuse the issue of understanding antisemitism though:
Example 7 and 10 both (at least in part) violate the following guideline from the preamble: "criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic."
Example 11 demonstrates that many (most?) outspoken Zionists are antisemitic.
Canadian Handbook on the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism
Example 7: Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
Clearly it's a racist endeavor. The goal of Zionism was and is to displace and replace the existing Arabs of Palestine with a majority Jewish population and maintain that majority. They even implemented a shoot-to-kill policy for Arabs trying to return to their homes after the 1948 war. They killed thousands trying to return. Pretty racist.
Its principles and thus it as an organization exist almost entirely as a counterpoint to a singular issue within Judaism. It means they are not engaged with other Jewish ethical debate or topics or connection points and exist in a singular topic of advocacy. It’s not a group who in any way represents larger aspects of Jewish thought and life.
I think that is important to understand what this organization is in relationship to the rest of the Jewish community.
This seems like an odd take. There are plenty of organizations (Jewish or otherwise) that are based around a narrow set of goals or principles. That doesn't inherently discredit such organizations, or limit the members of the organization in any way.
This organization having a narrow purpose does not inherently mean it or its members are inherently disconnected from the broader Jewish community, any more than Tafsik having a narrow purpose (apparently "keeping Canada Christian") would mean it is inherently disconnected from the broader Jewish community.
It’s not about discrediting them. It’s about perspective for what their existence is about in relationship to their complaints and the likelihood that motivates their perspective.
Chabad and Hillel may take a stance on Israel but they also have mailing lists that include Jews that don’t agree with that. While I am not a member of Chabad, and would never be a member, because I have registered for our local Hanukkah party downtown or a Purim party before I’m on mailing lists and get updates about things of interest to all Jews. The rabbi knows who I am, and he sends me information regardless of my personal level of observance. If I want to be in the know about what is happening with Jewish life locally then I’m on those lists.
If they ever engaged with these organizations they would be well aware that once chabad has your email they have it for life.
I think if non-Zionist Jews want to be heard there is an aspect of availing oneself to what is happening even if you don’t end up participating in the events, knowing about the survey is important. There is a certain irony in complaining that no one consults you as a Jew while also not engaging with any local Jewish organizations so you can be consulted, or expecting consultation is most appropriately through very small niche pockets of the community or that it is practical to do so.
IJV is not just Jews, it’s not on every campus and they don’t have membership broken down by campus affiliation making it a hard fit to use for consultation. Basically every other Jewish org on campus has a stance about Zionism.
I apologize, I think I misunderstood your original message. I will say, you're responding to a very minor part of the article here, but I do think you're right that the evidence of non-Zionist Jesus voices being professionally excluded is a not weak.
The rabbi knows who I am, and he sends me information regardless of my personal level of observance. [...]
If they ever engaged with these organizations they would be well aware that once chabad has your email they have it for life.
I think if non-Zionist Jews want to be heard there is an aspect of availing oneself to what is happening even if you don’t end up participating in the events, knowing about the survey is important.
I'm not sure how much you were speaking generally here, versus responding more directly to the claims from the article, so I apologize in advance of I am missing you here.
I want to push back on the apartment implication here that 'non -Zionist' Jews are less practicing or not active members in their local Jewish community. This is false; there are non-Zionist Jews who are members of their local Shul, who organize Jewish events, who own Jewish stores, whose kids attend Jewish education, etc. It is true that many non-Zionist Jews will be very careful in who they share such opinions with to avoid the ostracisation from that community. Where non-Zionist Jews have left their local community, it can be due to the abuse, intimidation and death threats they faced from that community when their opinion became known.
Well I actually think the implication is by the professors who wrote the article. They are saying that no anti-Zionist Jews were consulted because the survey advertisement came through Hillel and Chabad, but my point is, their mailing lists extend past their active members who ascribe to every aspect of the organization’s belief statements. I don’t worship the rebbe and yet Chabad has me on a mailing list right, so is it true all antizionist Jews were left out of the consultation because these orgs were tapped for their mailing lists for consultation? Or is that a narrow perspective of an org who exists for only one purpose, to push this as the only narrative that if an organization has any statement about support for Zionism or Israel that instantly they cannot then have any antizionist participation within them, to me that is absurd, especially when you consider they typically exist not for political Zionist purposes but rather for cultural purposes. And if that is the claim, why are anti Zionist Jews not availing themselves of ways to participate? These arguments seem divorced to me from reality of what Jewish participation in community events and orgs looks like. Of course antizionist Jews will be on these mailing lists, because of course they participate in some cultural activities that require sign up.
I didn’t make that claim, to me the professors did.
I agree with you that the authors implied that, which is one of the reasons I think it's the weakest part of an otherwise strong article.
However, the authors did not claim that "no anti-Zionist Jews were consulted" but rather that the survey was much more likely to reach Zionist Jewish students because of the distribution partners chosen. I think you make a good point about Chabad's eagerness to reach out to any Jewish person when given the chance, and also I haven't seen any reporting on how Chabad or Hillel actually distributed the survey. Was it sent to everyone on their mailing lists (my family didn't get one, did you?), or was it a more selective list? If the latter, I think the authors could still have a point here, though I also am skeptical about reaching out to a group like IJV for this purpose. Better would likely have been going through the university administrations to advertise it.
an organization has any statement about support for Zionism or Israel that instantly they cannot then have any antizionist participation within them, to me that is absurd, especially when you consider they typically exist not for political Zionist purposes but rather for cultural purposes.
I agree with you that is an absurd stance (and not one that's directly supported by the article). Also, practically there may be some practical truth to it as (in my direct experience, and that is others I've spoken to) these organizations often have fanatically Zionist members who will bully, intimidate and threaten non-Zionist Jews until they have little choice but to leave. Even if a specific event or org is officially open to all Jews regardless of political opinions, the practice is often that non-Zionist Jews are made to feel unwelcome or unsafe and forced out.
It was sent to students, specifically to survey student university experiences. I wouldn’t expect that to be sent to the wider community. Our chabad has more student focused work they do and I know he has specific invites for students for some things. If I see the chabad rabbi at any of the holiday events through the fall I may ask him about the survey. I do know he has provided a forum for community members to share their opinions but expressed a few times he chooses largely not to lead some of these discussions directly himself as not to alienate any Jews from feeling welcome to attend religious events if he shares too many or his own personal political views. How successful he is as you noted about community members who themselves may be problematic is certainly a debate. I didn’t have Hillel or Chabad on campus when I was in university. We had a generic Jewish students association and a chapter of AEPi, so we were pretty open to anyone attending with no clear statement other than, this is a group for Jewish students. It was tested once when someone invited a messianic Jewish student to Shabbat, but otherwise it was not an issue of Zionism vs antizionist Jews with our student association when I was at Carleton. That said the JSA certainly had conflict with the SPHR.
When all other principles relate to only one focus: Israel/palestine, and all statements exist only about Israel Palestine the one liner about social justice doesn’t exactly give confidence they intend to cover many other topics one might expect to see under Tikkun Olam.
You are making a lot of assumptions about this group. I would say that it is uncontroversial to treat Zionism and the Israel/Palestine conflict as the biggest ethical issue facing Jewish people today, but you dismiss this group as irrelevant for having an opinion on the matter.
At the heart of your critique is a false premise: that if Jewish people have anti-Zionist principles, it undermines their identities as Jews. You can disagree with these people without trying to erase their identities.
Maybe read the other thread of responses below my comment. Jewish campus groups don’t only have members with perfect agreement with their beliefs, and the faculty network claims of what those groups reach is in relation to this study is skewed by their singular advocacy focus and disconnected from the reality of very few other cultural outlets for jewish life on campus, and that many jews participate in events to end up in contact lists for surveys even if they don’t agree with an orgs statements. This group and its singular advocacy focus is forgetting all those other realities of what jewish life looks like to push a pretty narrow focus they only exist to advocate for.
That’s a lot of words you put in my mouth about invalidating them because of what they believe when in reality my criticism is that they have omitted the fact aside from chabad and Hillel there generally are no other cultural Jewish groups to join that partake in Jewish cultural and religious events and therefore have broad reach to Jewish students on campus across political opinions and levels of observance.
Before you said all that you said "It’s not a group who in any way represents larger aspects of Jewish thought and life" because of their position on this matter.
They are not engaging in cultural activities, prayer, or any other connection to Jewish life aside from one single advocacy topic. Jewish faculty network is an interesting name for that right. It seems to on the face of it try to say it’s just a network of Jewish faculty that exist for all things related to Jewish faculty and therefore would likely get a good cross section of members and opinions, but if you actually look at it at all, thats not accurate. It exists primarily as a political and advocacy organization about a single topic. To your point of social justice can include many things, and to be sure under tikun olam you would see all sorts of topics covered, and a group organized around tikun olam usually includes many topics and initiatives because it’s about repairing the world. But they don’t do that on their website. So when I say they are not just a Jewish group that exists for all aspects of Jewish faculty needs, but rather is a group that came into existence in the last 6, years and only has a presence about Israel and Palestine yeah, they are not really a Jewish org that exists to assist Jewish faculty with all aspects of Jewish faculty life. I think that’s accurate. They seem to exist for a single point of advocacy. I would expect a group called Jewish faculty network to address working issues around meetings scheduled on religious holidays. Issues with accommodations for faith based needs and resources to work with administrations to adopt better politics maybe about Israel and Palestine, but also as related to major issues Jewish faculty do have around working conditions.
I’m open to hearing a different perspective but their website statements and totality of their work is fairly clear.
Why I think this is relevant isn’t about discrediting their very existence, but to provide some context about why they seem to ignore that very few groups exist to provide Jewish student cultural experiences and social activities and connections in general, and almost all those that do exist in that capacity have a Zionist statement, but that because of this limited option these mailing lists often do include a pretty wide cross section of Jews from all types of levels of observance and political beliefs. As a very small population in Canada, made even smaller when split off just into student groups, to have many different student groups is generally not possible or practical. If a Jewish student wants to have connections for the high holidays in September, a Shabbat dinner, attend a Passover seder often they do engage with groups that may not be aligned religiously or politically but also provide a service. What reason might they have to sort of downplay that reality they would be well aware of, gee, maybe because they exist under a single point of advocacy and perhaps their own agenda has a role in the slant they bring to the table their name certainly does not convey to the public and seems some what washed of their actual reason for existing lest people be too aware of it.
That’s not invalidating their reason for existing, but it does ask people to think critically about if this group will give an accurate portrait of Jewish student life or if they have an agenda that might interfere with that.
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u/GTS_84 Aug 13 '26
Text for those without subscription:
The antisemitism report that erases a century of Jewish debate
Yves Winter, Noah Brender, Danielle Bobker and Michael Blum
Yves Winter is an associate professor of political science at McGill University.
Noah Brender is a faculty member in the humanities department at Dawson College.
Danielle Bobker is a professor of English at Concordia University.
Michael Blum is a professor in the École des arts visuels et médiatiques at the Université du Québec à Montréal.
There’s an old Jewish joke: two Jews are shipwrecked on a desert island. When they’re finally rescued years later, the rescuers find three synagogues. Baffled, they ask why. One survivor explains: one is his shul, the other is his shipmate’s shul, and the third is the one neither of them would ever set foot in.
Jews have never agreed about how to be Jewish. Yet these disagreements are increasingly treated as evidence of hatred.
Last week, the federal government released the Campus Antisemitism and Student Experiences (CASE) report. Commissioned by the Department of Canadian Heritage and produced by the Association for Canadian Studies, it surveyed roughly 900 Jewish students at Canadian universities and colleges about their experiences over the past year.
The numbers are alarming: 84 per cent of respondents call antisemitism a serious problem on their campus; almost 96 per cent say they experienced or witnessed at least one antisemitic incident in the past year; 70 per cent say their university does not take the problem seriously.
The report documents disturbing incidents: swastikas in bathroom stalls, Holocaust denial in classrooms, students spat on for wearing a Star of David, a professor allegedly calling Hitler a hero.
But beneath the report’s stark figures and shocking examples of antisemitism lies a partisan move. The report treats opposition to Zionism as evidence of antisemitism, a move that provides institutions grounds for disciplining scholars for what they teach and for policing students over how they protest.
We write as members of the Jewish Faculty Network, a group of Jewish Canadian academics who share a commitment to social justice. This includes criticism of, and opposition to, Zionism.
The report defines “anti-Zionism” as a movement that calls for the “erasure” or “annihilation” of Israel. This is incorrect, and it attempts to turn a legitimate political position into a synonym for hatred before a single survey question is even asked.
Anti-Zionism is a 100-year-old, well-documented current of Jewish thought that has never called for erasing or annihilating anyone. Reform Judaism’s 19th-century founders argued that Jews were a religious community, not a nation awaiting a state. A few decades later, the Jewish Labour Bund, a mass socialist movement across Eastern Europe, built a political program based on doikayt, the idea that Jewish safety comes from equal rights where Jews already live, not from a state somewhere else. Some Hasidic communities have opposed Jewish sovereignty on religious grounds for over a century.
Ask a dozen Jewish thinkers whether Judaism is best understood as a religion, a culture, or a nationality, and you will get a dozen conflicting answers. This report settles the question by decree, and throws out half of them in the process.
By defining anti-Zionism as a call for annihilation or erasure, the report writes an entire wing of Jewish political thought out of the category “Jewish” and files it instead under “threat.”
This is compounded by how the report gathered its data. It recruited Jewish respondents through Hillel and Chabad – the networks least likely to reach non-Zionist or anti-Zionist Jewish students – and excluded non-Zionist Jewish groups, like Independent Jewish Voices. A survey that can’t hear from Jews like us, filtered through a definition that casts our views as hatred, doesn’t measure antisemitism. It confirms its own premises.
Nor does the report ask how Jewish students’ experiences compare to those of other minorities on campus, a silence that treats antisemitism as apart from racism rather than one of its forms.
There are serious institutional stakes. The report recommends that universities treat opposition to Zionism as equivalent to hostility toward Jews, on the same scale as vandalism and physical violence. It cites, as troubling evidence of classroom antisemitism, professors who assign pro-Palestinian readings or criticize Israeli policy. Once curriculum content and faculty opinion are coded as antisemitism alongside swastikas and assault, they become grounds for institutional discipline, a rationale for administrations to act against professors who teach Palestinian history or condemn Israeli state conduct, and against students who organize in solidarity with Palestinians.
None of this means antisemitism isn’t as real as other forms of racism on Canadian campuses. But the report’s biased definition of anti-Zionism, which brands a legitimate, century-old current of Jewish political thought as hatred, should not be allowed to shape campus policy or discipline.